James Hickman talks about living with schizophrenia

James Hickman was born in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1974. His mother, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, passed away when he was 7, sending Hickman into a childhood of foster homes, poverty, hunger, and neglect. At the age of 21, James himself was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and now, after learning how to manage his illness while still obtaining a master’s degree in social work, he has decided to share his story with others.

“I was twenty-one years old when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia,” he told Saludify. “The average age of onset for men is younger than it is for women, 18 and 25 respectively. No one really knows why this is so. Being diagnosed later than average for men was beneficial to me in that I was almost finished earning my bachelor’s degree by the time I was diagnosed. 

I began experiencing a deluge of delusional ideas which progressively got worse over the course of one week and which were in full effect for the second week. I also felt like I could hear voices, some good and some bad, communicating in my mind and telling me to do odd things.”

SEE ALSO: Schizophrenia may consist of 8 genetic disorders

Hickman said he received medical help when some policemen called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. They could see that he was not in his right mind, since his responses to their questions didn’t make much sense.

The voices in his head told James not to respond to the officers’ questions and so they handcuffed him and put him in the back of an ambulance. At the time, he was experiencing a cascade of religious ideas and thought the ambulance was a chariot taking him to hell.

Though he received a schizophrenia diagnosis at that time, James told Saludify he remained in denial about his condition, primarily because he felt fine after he stopped taking the medications he was prescribed.

“One reason for this was because of the side-effects related to the medication when I did try to take it,” he explained. “I experienced dry mouth which was so severe that I had practically no moisture in my mouth at all. Another side-effect was blurred vision. Another reason why I was in such denial was because it took almost two years for me to experience a relapse of the psychotic symptoms which occurred initially. For that two year period I functioned the same way I always had before my initial psychotic break with reality.”

It wasn’t until the third time symptoms started to return that Hickman decided to start taking his medication as prescribed. While it improved some of the symptoms, like the delusions, it did not completely manage the feelings of depression and lethargy which often accompany the disease. What’s more, the most noticeable issue James developed was a nicotine addiction.

“For the past five years of my illness the most difficult part of managing symptoms has had to do with my nicotine addiction. At age thirty-five, nicotine began having a much more noticeable effect upon me. For that period of time, it felt like whenever I was trying to cope with the intoxicating effects of nicotine then I was trying to cope with the withdrawal symptoms of trying to quit, which are quite severe,” he said.

The stress of living with schizophrenia and medication side-effects was compounded by the stigma James experienced, often from his own family. Though eventually raised by his grandmother, he indicated that many of his family members exited his life, and those who remained seemed to look at him different and more child-like.

SEE ALSO: Therapy, medication key to life expectancy for an individual with schizophrenia